Thursday, June 25, 2009

Last week, I spent about two days (maybe more--it seemed like more) doing my semi-final edits on CRICKET'S MOON. They didn't want to leave the house -- we had to sent them three times before I was sure they were gone. But they finally got where they were going.

NOTE: Doing edits for an electronic publisher is much easier than doing them for a print publisher. Print publishers send a print-out on computer paper -- that l-o-n-g, connected paper, and you are supposed to make your corrections NEATLY, so there are no mistakes, and send the whole thing back intact! (At least that was the way it was when my last print project was in the works -- I barely remember.) Now, we do it on the file and that's pretty much it, very few ways for mistakes to sneak back in. Zap -- it's supposed to go back -- without costing $20 in postage, ot $30 for an ink cart to print out.

Anyway. In the middle of that, a dear writing friend who has an audio book company called and asked if I'd be interested in having ONCE AGAIN A PRINCESS produced as in audio book. That's interesting. That is a book that goes way back--I wrote while I was recovering from eye surgery just to amuse myself. It became my first ebook, and I love it for breaking every rule I thought I could get away with.

Anyway, this afternoon the editor from my epublisher emailed me that she needed a copy of THAT SPECIAL SOMEONE, my next ebook under contract, because she couldn't find it. No problem! The file has already been sent to her.

So -- CRICKET'S MOON comes out July 10 -- two weeks from tomorrow! (Mild panic.)THAT SPECIAL SOMEONE comes out September 18.And ONCE AGAIN A PRINCESS -- we're talking November.

Friday, June 12, 2009

It's a Busy Time

There's a lot of stress in the air. The whole Televison Issue is driving us nuts. Then there's the weather -- we've had rain and more rain, and an episode of 60-mph winds that -- well, it didn't do our garden any good. And I'm not making much headway with the garden this year anyway.

On top of that! Oh, yes -- this is where I'm going -- I have a book coming out in less than a month! I've picked what I want for the cover (a super luxury ebooks have over print!) and am waiting for the editor's version so that all the things I've thought that I should have done better can get changed -- or not. I've got a personal appearance lined up -- one of those things that makes me very nervous. And I have another book that is trying to make me sit here and write!

Someone once said that the act of writing is opening a vein and bleeding on the page. I'm a little too private for that. But this series that I'm working on has developed into a big challenge. I'm writing about social issues and groups of people I haven't heretofore addressed, though I've given them a lot of thought.

Writing "sweet" romances protects me from having to face issues that aren't neat and comfortable. The most difficult things I've addressed before were the political decentralization of Europe (Once Again a Princess), a heroine who was physically challenged (The Hardest Step) -- and my struggles with my vision (Come Home to Love). Now I'm dealing with poverty, interracial relations and some minor class differences.

So, the first book in the series is Cricket's Moon, coming out July 10. It wasn't hard to write, I just had to use my imagination. The second book, Cassie's Flame, was a bit more of a stretch, into social problems. It won't come out for a while, so I may be toning it down -- or not. The third book will be Cleome's Garden, and Cleome herself is a piece of work. I don't know where this one will end up -- except that there will be a happy ending.

I like happy endings. I've seen too many unhappy endings. If I can make my people on paper happy, I do.